G-B: rerun of 2018 general elections
Rashed Rahman
The interim, unofficial results of the Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) election show a disconcerting, familiar pattern. At the time of writing these lines, these results show the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) leading with 10 of the 22 seats being contested out of the 23 seats in the G-B Legislative Assembly. In second place are Independents with seven seats, followed by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) with three, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) with two and the Majlis Wahdat-ul-Muslimeen (MWM) with one seat. The Independents and MWM are expected to join hands with the PTI to form the government.
Both the PPP and PML-N have rejected these results, alleging rigging. Disturbing reports, for example of a clash of PTI-PPP workers in Skardu, point towards the polarisation in the country generally and in G-B in particular increasing. This clash, according to the PPP, ensued when the PTI workers attacked the PPP’s office. Earlier, during the election process, the PPP had accused the returning officers in some constituencies of not announcing the results despite the vote counting having been completed. Further, the PPP alleged PTI workers took away the ballot boxes in Ghizer after 11 pm on Sunday night.
Federal ministers on twitter castigated the opposition parties for making rigging allegations even before the polling day on November 15, 2020. Federal Information Minister Shibli Faraz went even further, claiming the opposition’s narrative had been buried in G-B. On the other hand, just before the voting closed, PPP Vice President Sherry Rehman said at a press conference in Gilgit that a number of election observers of the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) had been removed from the polling stations before the counting process started. Further, some voters discovered when they arrived to cast their ballots that their votes had already been cast by postal ballot. No prizes for guessing which side benefited from this mail-in legerdemain. Information Secretary of the PPP’s G-B chapter Sadia Danish, who was herself a candidate in this election, alleged that the polling agents of the PPP’s candidate in Gilgit-1 (GBLA-1) had been made hostage at a polling station in Skarkai. Further, she accused the presiding officer of illegally stamping some ballots. Ms Danish said Form-45 had been received at 62 polling stations in constituency GBLA-1 after 8:00 pm. Whether this was due to the inefficiency of the G-B election commission or something else can only be left to the imagination.
This third election in G-B had assumed unprecedented significance because of the tense political situation in the country as a whole when the opposition’s 11-party Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) is in the middle of an anti-government campaign of protest rallies. In this context, any controversy regarding the G-B elections is bound to feed into an escalating conflict between the two sides of the political divide. Even before the polls opened, allegations of horse-trading and pressurisation of the previous ruling party in G-B, the PPP’s local, seasoned leaders to switch sides to the PTI were doing the rounds.
PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has openly accused the PTI and its backers of stealing the G-B election. He has warned the PPP should not be pushed into reacting in extreme manner. Maryam Nawaz too has tried to put balm on the opposition supporters’ wounds by saying they should not be discouraged by the results of this allegedly rigged election. This puts paid to the theories circulating about establishment-engineered splits in the PDM.
It would be useful to recall that the 2018 elections, about which the opposition had alleged interference and intervention by the military and security forces to bring about a result they desired, had left the PTI just short of a simple majority. The deficit was made up by the usual cast of opportunist parties and politicians always waiting in the wings to answer the establishment’s call. This time in G-B too, it seems the same formula will be applied, with the simple majority deficit of the PTI being made up by the so-called Independents and turncoats who have abandoned their mother parties at the behest of the establishment.
If the 2108 general elections and the just concluded G-B elections are the new rules of the political game set by the establishment, it is debatable whether this can produce an acceptable and stable dispensation anywhere in the country. Nor can the prospects of a genuine democracy emerging at some time be considered bright. If this analysis proves correct, the possibility of an explosion cannot be ruled out. The rules of political contention must be above board, fair, without prejudice or manipulation by the powerful establishment. Anything short of that is a political disaster in the making.
However, for a genuine democratic system to be created, all political forces have to learn the cost of collaboration with the establishment, both to their own credibility as well as something describable as a credible democracy. Only principled opposition to an establishment-created, false political dispensation can take the country forward.
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